Many consumer electronic products are susceptible to damage when the user places a battery or battery holder in the battery compartment of the electronic product in reverse polarity. Therefore, many electronic devices come with either a mechanical or electronic protection scheme to either prevent the insertion of a battery in the reverse polarity or to prevent the effects of reverse polarity. If the reverse polarity protection is done electronically, the circuits used to provide this protection may take up valuable circuit board space in the electronic product. Furthermore, a reverse polarity circuit may cause greater power drain on the batteries in order to operate the protective circuit.
In addition to the effects of reverse polarity, many electronic products will not function properly if there exists intermittency between cells, batteries and contacts in the product. Battery packs and holders for portable electronic products are typically subjected to a repeated number of drops. In particular, users of portable communication products such as two-way radios, cordless telephones, and cellular phones tend to drop their portable products, causing the problem of intercell contact intermittency. This temporary loss of power due to a broken connection causes unpredictable device operation, or in the case of a device with volatile memory circuits, a total loss of the memory's contents. This problem could potentially cause the loss of communications and/or other functions in other portable electronic products as well. Therefore, there exists a need to provide a mechanical device for use with electronic products such as radios and telephones that would not only provide reverse polarity protection, but provide protection against contact bounce or intermittency.